@MP, these are really excellent questions. I am in Japan this week and I am learning how some of the Japanese companies are planning to deal with privacy issues in the context of "big data" necessary for intelligent transportation system.

Hi Junko, the more we dig into this, my intrigue increases! And more issues surface... I suppose the folks in V2X may have already gone thru the exercises some of which the rest of us beginning to identify and discuss, perhaps duplicating in that process.

If we make all vehicles enabled with Vehicular Area Networks (VANs), how does one implement V2V networking (a la M2M) without first addressing privacy issues? There will have to be two layers to a M2M network in that situation -one internal and the other external which can be shared for traffic management, emergencies, etc. Speaking of the external layer, will the governments start some legislations where each vehicle owner will be mandated to share the external layer of vehicular M2M? I see this as an inevitable reality in the years to come as cities gear up with smart infrastructure.

Hi Junko, you bring up more interesting points. If emergency communication using a M2M model is one of the premises for V2X, I think there are multiple alternatives in addition to M2M.

One could also use use satellite communication for emergencies similar to devices like LoJack that can be triggered to send a data packet of information on the location and nature of emergency.

Though not exactly analogous, one of the methodologies that may be applicable to V2X is the one that is quite well researched -routing protocols for cognitive radio that make the best use of white space in the wireless spectrum.

@Sheetal.Pandey, honestly speaking, it had never occurred to me how the communication with space robots had anything to do with the communication among vehicles and infrastructure on earth, as I wrote in this blog.

But as MP pointed out, I think how the fruits of the joint reserach will be turned into commecial results still remains to be seen.

As the Ford's engineer explained, the purpose of the joint project is in the "higher-level, fundamental understanding of multi-protocol networks."

While much of the initial V2V, V2I testings had been focused on Dedicated Short Range Communications, many automakers today believe that communication among vehicles and to and from the infrastructure won't be limited to a single protocol wireless network.

They feel it's essential to build theoretical understandings on how different messages and signals should be more efficiently routed among multi-protocol networks.

That's interesting to see what ford is planning for future. I agree this is the most needed or desired thing in 5 -10 years from now. Quite an appreciative thought process and who else but ford doing it. This reminds me of hollywood flick "avatar".
Also with the ongoing trend with so many robots being sent to space this seems to be something well thought over for the future.

Junko, was there more to this article? It seems the writeup some what abruptly stops after "We're also considering adding new partners" to the project. Otherwise the article is intriguing, I wonder how they will realize commercial gains from this. There has been plenty of research done already based on cooperative game theory, etc.